Paint Shop Pro X9 - What is wrong with it?

[Fernando Pereira]

Hello,

I really don't have the right words to describe Paint Shop Pro X9's problems, so I decided to make a video showing it failing at an elementary level:
https://youtu.be/FoIU6qCMYS4

It seems that the Selection and Paste to Cursor is completely broken when near the edge of images. I've managed to replicate the problem in other computers as well, regardless of being Intel, AMD, nVidia or ATI - all running Windwos 7 64bit. Since I do mainly pixel art, this renders PSP useless in its current state, which makes me mad.

Also, after 1 hour of clicking and clacking with the mouse, PSP gets painfully slow, with half second or so of pauses between presses with the mouse, and the Paste to Cursor gets about 1 second pause between key presses (CTRL + E).

What is wrong with Paint Shop Pro? I never had these issues since JASC 7.02 (yes long PSP user here).

I'm I the only one noticing these problems?

[Jean-Luc]

I cannot reproduce the defect. I'm using Windows 10 64 bit.
Did you try the reset (shift key down during PSP launch) ?

[Fernando Pereira]

Yes but it didn't help. This is too frustrating, knowing Corel has no Support section concerning bug reports.
I don't have these problems with PSP X6. I can't believe that I'm the only one having these problems; I did replicate these issues in other computers.

[Fernando Pereira]

It seems I discover the reason to why it happens. Firstly, you need to have images in tabbed mode, then you need to scroll the image until half the screen is empty (as seen in the video). It is at this point the flickering and glitchs start to happen. If I uncheck tabbed mode the selection behaves normaly.

Can someone validate this?

[hartpaul]

Your video was difficult to see as the words and tools seemed blurred and had to count words across to try and identify what you were doing. It did not help that you did things so quickly as well.
Just to confirm here are the steps that you appeared to do:
1. Make a 500 x 500 pixel document , fill with black, and turn grid lines on with large spacing. Turn Tabbed documents on.
2. Make a new transparent layer and zoom in to about 300 % and scroll up to show the edge.
3. With paint brush set at low size and bright color chosen do a series of closed squiggles on the top layer. (about 90 x 90 pixels)
4. Choose Selection tool with selection type rectangle and surround the squiggle.
5. Left click drag inside the selection so that the selection is dragged around with the cursor doing this close to the edges .

Result is a trace that leaves parts behind. It does not occur at lower zoom settings 150% , nor with a small 5 x 5 pixels square and resulting smaller selection rectangle.

Reason it has not been reported by others is that the requirements to get this are very limited and few others would have these series of steps.

I suspect that the actions you are doing stretch the refresh rate of PSP and video card and the monitor. There have been problems with typing in large amounts of text and using a very large paintbrush where there are delays in display.

[Fernando Pereira]

I made another video to make things clearer; no layers and no painting at all.
https://youtu.be/w9Mc5Y6ksDY

(note: the video shows some flickering that was not presented at the time I recorded it).

Steps:
1 - Loaded one image
2 - Made sure it was on tabbed mode
3 - Zoomed in and scrolled the image until half of the working view was empty.
4 - Selected a portion of the image and dragged it around.

The video shows than sometimes when I stop dragging the selection, it get filled (or not filled at all) with white chuncks and only after I change the zoom setting the view is properly displayed and free of artifacts.

"I suspect that the actions you are doing stretch the refresh rate of PSP and video card and the monitor. There have been problems with typing in large amounts of text and using a very large paintbrush where there are delays in display."

These are the same actions I always did in Paint Shop Pro X6 and previous versions supporting tabbed mode. Never had these problems before, not to mention these versions never got this painfully slow after a while of constantly clicking the mouse (you know, pixel art...). Regardless of how quick you screen's refresh rate is or how fast your GFX card's drawing capability is, presenting artifacts in the screen between frames is directly related with how a program is coded.

Is there a way we can let Corel know abou this? Their support service seems related to installation / license / sales only.

Thank you.

[Kathy_9]

Your second video is private and cannot be viewed.

[hartpaul]

Well I just checked with X6 and it does have problems there if you zoom in to 600%. So it has been there foe extreme magnifications.
It even goes back to Jasc PSP 8 but I had to zoom in to 1500% to start getting the leftover bits. But in all cases a slight adjustment to the zoom using the mouse wheel made it refresh correctly.

Once again the need of zooming in to a large value 300- 1500% drawing a relatively large selction of that area and then waving it around just to see the artifacts evades me

[Fernando Pereira]

Your second video is private and cannot be viewed.

Strange, the video was set to public, but only when I changed its state and changed back to public it turned indeed public...
https://youtu.be/w9Mc5Y6ksDY

[Fernando Pereira]

Well I just checked with X6 and it does have problems there if you zoom in to 600%. So it has been there foe extreme magnifications.
It even goes back to Jasc PSP 8 but I had to zoom in to 1500% to start getting the leftover bits. But in all cases a slight adjustment to the zoom using the mouse wheel made it refresh correctly.

Once again the need of zooming in to a large value 300- 1500% drawing a relatively large selction of that area and then waving it around just to see the artifacts evades me

The leftovers are a small part of the problem, being unable to see where you're placing your selection is what really annoys me. In both videos, there are times the selection is either invisible or partially drawn, mainly when you release the LMB to place it. These are the problems I never had before. In the last video, you can still see the white portion of the background even after I released the selection on top of it. I need to constantly zoom in and out to fix the problem.

I'm just glad I managed to discover what triggers it. I've skipped the use of tabbed images; it's something that I would prefer having but it is not crucial. Regarding the slowness after drawing for a while, is there a way to flush out the undo / redo? Even zooming in and out gets freaking slow after a good while. I know I can reduce the amount of undo steps PSP can store but I would prefer to keep a huge amount of history and flush it out when required. At the moment my only fix is to exit PSP and run it again.

Thank you for your feedback.